


two in a million

by kamisado



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Gen, Math, Past Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-11-17 04:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11267499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kamisado/pseuds/kamisado
Summary: That’s the thing about probabilities. There’s always the chance, no matter how small, that the outcome might be different. That little sliver of hope always remains. But ninety-nine times out of a hundred, Emily was going to die on that table, Emily was always going to die, and Reid knows he was foolish for thinking that this time would be like every other time they defied the odds and made it out.[reid struggles with prentiss’s death. spoilers up to 6x18 lauren.]





	two in a million

_It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one…_ – Lemony Snicket

*

The odds of getting trapped in an elevator are 1 in 100,000, the odds of being struck by lightning ten times greater. These are the easy statistics, the awkward ice-breakers and gameshow winners. Reid shares these with the team on lazy nights over takeaway, when he fumbles with chopsticks, forgets about work and laughs about the little things. These are the nights he remembers the clearest, the ones where the golden sun hangs low in the sky and they swap stories, share secrets.

They’re a family, dysfunctional and argumentative and broken sometimes, but they love each other, and deep down that’s all that matters.

*

The odds of being murdered are 1 in 16,000, the odds of a serial killer less, but still disturbingly high.

These are the harder statistics, the ones about murder and violence, diligently committed to memory for recollection at a moment’s notice. The team knows the statistics and probabilities too, but if they knew the minutiae, the gruesome threat in every movement calculated at a moment’s notice, they’d never leave the house again.

He supposes this should worry him, the knowledge that every action carries such terrifying risk. But Reid finds it weirdly liberating. With his math knowledge coupled with a childhood spent in Vegas, he knows full well there are guys out there who’d do so many awful things to someone like him. The thought used to scare him silly as a kid, lying paralyzed at night, wishing the world was just that little bit more mysterious, less quantifiable. But everyone who gets on a plane or goes for a swim or ever set foot outdoors is putting themselves in harm’s way and Reid knows that better than anyone.

He can't set foot in a casino in three counties, but gambling is worthless to him anyway. There’s no such thing as a gamble, just a string of ever-changing probabilities shifting before his eyes. That’s all his job is, one long numbers game where sometimes they win.

*

The odds of getting to Emily in time were 1 in 500,000. The odds of her making through surgery, even less. So when JJ pushes through those doors with hollow eyes and shaking hands, the sucker-punch of surprise shouldn’t have winded him as much as it did. He should have _known._

That’s the thing with an eidetic mind; it sees in patterns, thinks in math. Emotions are second, they always have to be or he’d never do his damn job, but the breath is still snatched sharply from his lungs.

Emily the co-worker, the friend, the confidant. The BAU agent, the undercover spy, the lover of a terrorist. The woman whom he hated when he first met her, her stoicism and his shaking hands, the woman who took a beating for him in a bunker in Colorado and barely flinched.

All of those Emilys, past, present and future, all of them bled out behind those doors, all alone and afraid.

The ground shifts beneath his feet, the bile rises in his throat. The shock is etched on all their faces, tears springing to their eyes, but he can’t look at them, can’t even _think_ about how this means he’s never going to see her smile again, never going to hear her laugh at bad Sci-fi with him or curse in Arabic under her breath when she’s mad. His breath is catching in his throat and he needs to leave _now_ , because there’s an iron vice around his lungs and it’s _squeezing,_ the room is tilting hard and it won’t _stop–_

JJ takes him in her arms. She’s shaking.

It’s over.

*

That’s the thing about probabilities. There’s always the chance, no matter how small, that the outcome might be different. That little sliver of hope always remains. But ninety-nine times out of a hundred, Emily was going to die on that table, Emily was always going to die, and Reid knows he was foolish for thinking that this time would be like every other time they defied the odds and made it out.

*

_I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye._

_*_

The odds of acquiring post-traumatic stress disorder on the job are 1 in 24. The odds of a relapse after Dilaudid abuse are 1 in 7.

These numbers offer him no comfort at all as he passes the glass bottle from hand to hand. The pucker of injection sites still scar his inside elbow, his ankles, between his toes. They glow white in the fluorescent strip-light of his bathroom, a constellation of mistakes traced across his body. It would be so easy to add another one, and then he wouldn’t have to see Emily’s face etched behind his eyelids every time he closed his eyes. One sharp scratch and he wouldn’t have to see her bleeding out in his dreams, won’t have to replay every conversation they’ve ever had over and over in his mind because he’s afraid he’ll forget what her voice sounded like.

One more hit, and then he wouldn’t have to feel like _this._

He dashes the bottle into the sink; it shatters into a million tiny stars. The translucent glow of pale pink liquid swirls around the drain.

*

The odds of Emily still being alive are infinitesimal.

He can still feel the weight of her coffin in his hands, the prick of the rose he tossed on her grave in his fingers.  Bruises trace his palms after hour after hour spent on the firing range, the paper targets morphing into Doyle, into every shadowy UnSub, sometimes even into himself. Those are the headshots he always makes.

These are things he will never be able to quantify, memories branded forever behind his eyes as indelible as her name carved into stone in front of him. There will always be cases for them to solve, criminals to capture, and that empty seat won’t stay that way forever. The statistics have been wrong before, but if he begins to doubt those, there’s nothing left for him at the BAU.

They’ll move on, like they always do, until she’s just another face on a wall of people who should still be with them. Every glimpse of her face makes his throat tighten, and he rushes past that wall every day, head bowed low. He can’t bear to think of a time when he’ll see that smile from behind hardened glass and feel nothing at all.

He figures he should feel lucky to have met her at all. The pair of them were two in a million, two people in a world of seven billion, who crossed paths out of sheer luck. The numbers were stacked against them from the very start. The last four years in each other’s company were a blessing, and the universe can’t take that away from him, no matter how hard it tries.

But Reid reckons that if he counted every star visible in the night sky, every star named in known space, he’d still not come up with a number big enough to have a chance of seeing her face to face again, to say _goodbye_ and _thank you_ and _I’m sorry_.

He’s not willing to take those odds.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i was a little miffed at how quickly emily's fake death was revealed to the audience, so have some wallow-y sadness in the form of vaguely bullshit maths. find me on tumblr [here](http://indigoecho.tumblr.com/)!


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